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I love playing Pandemic, but the one of the biggest holdups for me is how you can only play 4 players. However, in the box there are 7 roles! (Scientist, Researcher, Medic, Quarantine Specialist, Dispatcher, Operations expert, Contingency planner).

Has anyone had experience or would like to hypothesize playing with 5, 6, or all 7 players at once? If so, what additional rules do you incorporate (if any) to keep the integrity of the game (i.e. starting cards, number of actions, etc.)?

I'm aware that there are only so many city cards to use so 7 players would really make you be super sensitive in how you use the cards. And I'm sure there are other things to consider also.

I'm just very curious to know what all of your experiences are! Thank you for your time.

i dont think this qualifies as a duplicate. the other question specifically references playing the "Through the brink" expansion - which allows 5 players - with 6 players. This question is exploring whether the vanilla game can be played with more than 4 players, and if so, how many extra players it can support
–
PattersMay 19 '14 at 8:38

1 Answer
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The On the Brink expansion does allow for five player games . I believe the only rule change in On the Brink that would affect this is only shuffling two event cards per player into the deck. I'm not sure if this would affect only playing with the base game (the expansion includes many more event cards which makes this necessary), I can't remember how many event cards there were with just the base game.

The main issue you face with playing with more people is the game's built-in time limit (when you run out of city cards). I've never tried altering the rules to better accommodate more players.

I can't remember where I saw it posted. But I believe the creators of the game said that they limited the number of players to such a small number as playtesters didn't find it to be fun having to wait so long between turns. If a player traveled to a city to treat diseases on their next turn. A game with five other players meant that ten more infection cards would be played before they had a change to clear anything up.

This. Because the only thing you can do out of turn is play an Event, it gets really boring, and the special actions of each Role also get diluted because there are a fixed number of player turns to be had. In 6-player, 12 cards would be dealt from a deck of 48 cities + 5 events, then 5 Epidemics are shuffled in, leaving a draw deck of 46 cards. Two cards drawn per player turn = 23 player turns = not quite 4 turns per player, or 16 actions. Even if only half of those actions were movement, a Medic could only cure 8 cities in the entire game.
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KeithSAug 27 '14 at 21:26